Purloining Derrida? Authority, materiality and the right to philosophy in ArgentinaFrancis J Jervis

Abstract
This paper examines the prosecution of an Argentine philosophy professor, Horacio Potel, forsharing a number of texts by Jacques Derrida online. By reading his own critique of copyrightand the charges brought against him in conjunction with Derrida’s own work, I consider how Po-tel challenges understandings of authorship, law, and the ethics of copying, and how it has inﬂu-enced popular discourse on copying. I also examine how his critique of the printed book as tech-nology of transmission, in contrast to the liberatory potential of digital technologies, complicatesour understanding of the materiality of cultural forms in resistances to neoliberalism in Argen-tina. Potel’s project can best be understood, I argue, as the construction of a reading subjectwhose orientation to the author and text is radically distinct from those seen either in other formsof “piracy” or liberal discourses of “open access” or “fair use.”